Mac OS X Public Beta (Kodiak) Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah) Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma) Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) Mac OS X Panther – 10

Mac OS X Public Beta (Kodiak)

Mac OS X 10.0 (Cheetah)

The Mac OS X Public Beta was an early, test version of the Mac OS X operating system released to the public on September 13, 2000. Hardcore Macintosh fans could therefore get a taste of the upcoming operating system before its final release. It was named Kodiak internally by Apple. The name was not publicly used. The public beta was the first time people could use the Aqua interface. Virtually everything was new in the operating system: fonts, the Dock, even the menu bar (with an Apple logo at the centre, which was later repositioned). The icons exploded in size, and new OS eye candy was all the rage.

Mac OS X 10.0, dubbed “Cheetah” went on sale on March 24, 2001. It brought the Aqua user interface and technology like preemptive multitasking and protected memory to a wider audience than the Public Beta.

Cheetah required 128 MB of RAM, which seems meager today, but was more than most Mac users had in their systems at the time. Even machines that surpassed the system requirements ran slowly under Mac OS X, which was the number one complaint of users about the release.